Tweeting as a Teacher

During a unit of creative writing I was participating in a team meeting when I remembered reading about Mystery Skype. Mystery Skype allows students to Skype other classes around the world and they try to figure out where the other class is. Attached to the information about Mystery Skype was information about the authors available to Skype who give advice, answer questions or share advice. I read about this program and suddenly realised the opportunity there was within social media to connection with authors of student's favourite books.

As a trial I created myself a twitter and chose an author that wrote within the writing type that the class was working on at the time (R. L. Stein) and sent out a tweet with the hopes of a response. The school day ended and with it came the weekend, around 1am my laptop dinged and with it was a response from the author less than 24 hours after I first sent the message. This solo tweet became my students creating questions for an author of their choice (that was on twitter) and these were all sent out with some responses coming back. The excitement that came with students receiving advice and communication from people they admire was incredible and this type of communication is something that could be ongoing throughout different topic areas.

Miss Shallcrass Twitter

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